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Peter Mandelson, the European commissioner for trade, is even reputed to have called Hilary aside shortly after he was first elected to the House of Commons. Then a New Labour spin-doctor, Mandelson advised Benn that he should cultivate different gestures from those of his father to avoid being mocked.

Benn, now the secretary of state for international development in Tony Blair’s government, does not appear to have paid much heed to Mandelson’s advice.

Politically, however, there appears to be a gulf between father and son.

Although Tony Benn, himself a cabinet minister in the 1970s, has been scathing of Tony Blair over Britain’s role in the wars against Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq – and on several economic and social policy issues – Hilary has been a loyal lieutenant of the prime minister.

That is not to imply that the two Benns have a tense relationship. On the contrary, Tony Benn’s published diaries contain large dollops of parental pride and affection; Hilary’s victory in a 1999 Leeds by-election is described as “heavenly”.

Yet there are signs that Hilary balks at the constant comparisons with his father. “I’m a Benn, not a Bennite,” he has said.

Bruised by the massive public anger over their apparently slavish attitudes to Washington, Blair and Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister), last year came up with a plan to convince voters that they are genuinely committed to the world’s downtrodden.

They decided that 2005 would be the year when Britain would champion Africa and pledged to make solving the continent’s problems a key priority of their presidencies of both the EU and Group of Eight (G8) top industrialised countries.

Benn’s department has, as a result, effectively acted as the secretariat for Blair’s Commission for Africa and, along with the treasury, is preparing much of the groundwork for next week’s G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland (6 July).

He is regularly rolled out to appear on BBC television programmes, fending off sceptical questions about whether any deals which Britain can broker on increasing aid or cancelling debts will make much difference in reducing poverty.

He is well-regarded by both Labour and Tory politicians. “He’s a Blairite, he’s not a nut,” is the positive assessment given by Nirj Deva, a Conservative MEP, who expresses surprise that Blair and Brown have deprived Benn of an even higher profile by their own PR efforts on Africa.

The Welsh Socialist MEP Glenys Kinnock says: “I know that Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown] get a lot of credit for pushing the ‘Make Poverty History’ agenda and because they have the lead role, other members of cabinet inevitably won’t get as much limelight. But Hilary is very positive and enthusiastic and committed to his job.”

Despite the public unity between the three B’s – Blair, Brown and Benn – suggestions have emerged that Benn does not always see eye-to-eye with his political masters.

In particular, it is rumoured that he was unhappy at how Tony Blair has agreed that some of the EU’s development aid finance can go to projects where the focus is security and the fight against terrorism, rather than the alleviation of hardship.

London-based anti-poverty activists have requested copies of correspondence between Benn and Blair on the surrounding issues under Britain’s freedom of information laws, but no papers have yet been released.

Benn was appointed to his cabinet post in October 2003. At the time, he replaced Valerie Amos, who had a short stint as international development secretary, before becoming leader of the House of Lords.

Pundits, however, tend to compare and contrast him with the veteran Labour MP Clare Short, who had resigned as international development secretary over the Iraq war earlier that year. Benn had previously worked as her deputy in the Department for International Development (DfID).

“Clare Short had a bright sharp focus and a questioning mind for development,” says a former DfID official. “My main criticism of Hilary Benn is that he may be trying to please too many people. With Clare Short, you had a department that Number 10 [Downing Street] thought was too independent from the rest of government. I think Hilary Benn has been given a mandate to work for Number 10.”

George Monbiot, a campaigning author and columnist with the Guardian, has attacked DfID for hiring the Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think-tank, as a consultant to promote privatisation of state industries in poor countries. “I think Benn is more amenable to persuasion than Clare Short, who was incapable of listening to her critics,” he says. “While Benn has persisted with the crazy policies she initiated, at least he seems to understand our concerns.

“He’s a nice guy and surprisingly humble for a front-bencher. His problem is that while he might wish to step back from his department’s neo-liberal policies, he has been put there by Tony Blair to create a better climate for British business. If that means using our aid money to enforce privatisation in developing countries, in order to help British banks and accountancy firms, then that is what he has to do. I have taken part in a public debate with him and he seemed to be intensely embarrassed when justifying these policies in front of an audience.”

Tony Benn’s diaries portray Hilary as a precocious child, who grasped why his father rebelled against the peerage system where seats in the House of Lords are handed down from one generation to the next. (Tony Benn was the son of William Wedgwood Benn, also known as Lord Stansgate). At the age of nine, Hilary told a TV interviewer: “The hereditary system is ridiculous and Britain ought to have a president who was elected instead of a queen who was not.”

Two years later, Hilary was chastising his father for participating in a cringe-inducing awards ceremony hosted by a flower delivery firm, where a “half-naked Hawaiian girl dressed in plastic flowers, insisted on putting a garland around my neck”. When Benn senior arrived home, his boy said: “Dad, you didn’t look at all authoritative, you were too eager, you were awful.”

But there is a deeply tragic side to Hilary’s life, too. In 1979 his wife Rosalind Retey died after an illness. The couple had only been married for six years.

Benn remarried in 1982. His wedding to Sally Clark, who had also suffered a recent bereavement (her sister Caroline was killed in a car crash), was a poignant event. “We took photographs and all left for Ealing Abbey, the chic Catholic church in West London, where the priest greeted us,” was how Tony chronicled the day. “Mother read the lesson most beautifully and it was such a sight to see that old lady reading the lesson, just as she had at Hilary’s first wife Rosalind’s funeral.”

Hilary is now a father of four: Michael, James, Jonathan and Caroline. All are in their late teens or twenties. And with their clan so steeped in politics, it will hardly come as a surprise if one or more of them embarks on a parliamentary career, citing that all-important caveat: “I’m a Benn, not a Bennite.”

Biography

1953: Born, London

1974 Graduates in Russian and East European Studies, Sussex University